The High Priestly Prayer (Part 3)

John 17: 20 - 26
 
The high priestly prayer of Jesus is remarkable for its entire focus on His followers (Jn 17:2). Having nearly completed His mission from His Father (Jn 17:3, 6), He proceeded to address His followers’ primary duties – “as You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world“ (Jn 17:18), after explicitly modelling what His mission encompassed by putting Himself in their place, with a distinctive joy invested in the future glory of men and women that masked the horror of the cross (Jn 17:1-6, 13, 22; Heb 12:2). Hence, our joyful significance is found only in Christ, and through Him, as witnesses wherever we are, even to the remotest parts of the earth (Acts 1:8). Soon after, the Apostle Paul was to describe believers as ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20), being the repository of the gospel in agape vulnerability as our incarnational Lord once did. 
 
Jesus’ prayer is ageless in that He is not just referring to His disciples of His day, but to all born-again believers through the ages (Jn 17:20, 24). In this context, our participation in the Lord’s evangelical mission is inextricably linked to our sanctification or holiness (cf., Jn 17: 17-19) and our glorification of Him (Jn 17:10). Let us delineate this critical issue in these final verses in His high priestly prayer in John’s Gospel (John 17: 20 – 26): Jesus’ mission was to clearly reveal (Jn 17:6; the Greek meaning ‘to manifest’ is to reveal to man’s minds and senses or to make visible) His Father, and following which, our task in glorifying Jesus is to reveal our Lord as the only way to His Father to those in the world. It is imperative that we appreciate the reality of what constitutes God’s eternal goal in terms of summing “up all things in Christ, things in the heavens and on the earth” (Eph 1:10), and since He is the timeless Alpha and the Omega (Rev 1:8), He is the most significant person in our lives, with this world becoming our mission field.
 
Then Jesus significantly revealed the dominant theme, the basis, for the witness of ‘His Body’ to the world – for unity and for divine glory: “the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one…” (John 17: 20 - 23). I am particularly intrigued by the Lord’s pronouncement of ‘oneness’ among believers. Any expression of unity, especially spiritual ‘oneness,’ is well beyond humanity’s reach, on its own. This ‘unity’ that our Lord addressed is only found within the Trinity (John 17: 23). The unity between the Father and the Son is irreplicable; the two are one, yet are distinct. The analogy is then applied with believers, where the latter’s identity remains intact in the Father and the Son (cf., John 15: 5).  The critical importance of this ‘oneness’ manifestation between the Father and the Son, with the born-again believer, being found in Him, is to result in a fuller experience of the Father and the Son (c.f., John 15:5; John 14: 10; John 17: 26): “and I have made Thy name known to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them.” The outcome of this ‘oneness’ with the Father and the Son results in the ‘unity’ among believers; consequently, the bond that unites us in Christ is as inseparable as is divine love (c.f., Matthew 12: 46 – 50). Having said that, we realise that ultimately language fails us in giving a comprehensive description of the spiritual dynamics of ' the living Christ in us', how much more the spirituality of expressing the 'oneness' that John addressed.  
 
The basis of the saints’ future glory is dependent on their receiving and trusting in the truth of Jesus as the logos of God and invariably His words or teachings (an interplay between ‘words’ as in ‘rhema’ and ‘the Word’ as in ‘logos’; Jn 17:6-8, 17). It is amazing how we would experiment and attempt to find our significance in every possible temporal craving as a surrogate to our physical, emotional, and spiritual deprivations rather than in the glory of God! But what sets a follower of Jesus apart is in our transformed attitude in heart, mind and will towards the dual truths anchored in the belief that He came from His Father, and the Father sent Him (Jn 17:6-8). The implications are that Jesus is not just a man whom we follow and pay lip service to, but is the Son of God, and His Father sent Him on this mission into time and space. He came to live a righteous life that is impossible for anyone to live, and in His death, His righteousness becomes ours, forming the basis of a holy reconciled relationship with His Father and our God (Rom 5:18-21). This dynamic rapport entails a daily following after Christ, which moves us away from spiritual passivity in our sanctification as we delve deep into the Word and ground ourselves in His truth. Paul phrased it this way, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12-13): the believer is called to self-activity in vigorous pursuit of the will of God and the advancement of his spiritual life, so that he would realize the virtues of the Christian life in love and oneness in Christ. Therefore, to walk in the way of God, to take up their cross to follow Him, is the true glory (c.f., 2 Cor 3: 18). This personal application of working out our salvation resulted from what God in His grace had achieved through Jesus Christ.